Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords

"Disappointing"

Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II : The Sith Lords, is like a bad drug. You will become addicted, but the experience will not be what you hoped. If you see it through all the way to the ending your addiction will be cured like getting a rotten dose. Savor the middle of the game, the end is lackluster and boring. In fact, KOTOR II would have received a 9/10 if I had written this review about fifteen hours in. The fact that it drops off pretty hard in the end can't be ignored.

The best way to describe KOTOR II is as a series of very good ideas with flawed executions. For example, you have many companions on your journey that will interact with each other and you depending on how you talk to them or treat others. This is a great idea and should have added a lot to the game. However, most of the companions never actually follow through on any of the interactions with you and the others they hint at (i.e. the end of it is ‘We'll discuss this later' and that time never comes), the only real outcome of all of this is that you can convert some of your less than impressive comrades into Jedis, which gets old after the third time you do it. You are further limited by only being able to take two people with you at any time. This is actually rather annoying, as the ‘plot' conveniently takes certain characters out of the action, or forces you to take certain characters for certain parts of the story. You more or less just end up un-equipping one person and giving their stuff to the someone else, which in my mind is a waste of time. Since your party levels up as a group, and characters are very similar, who you take with you matters very little, aside from a few dialog lines and one or two power ups. Also, and another example of how you have very limited control, you don't have the choice as to who you do and do not let onto your ship, with a few exceptions. Expanding on the different characters would have made the game much better.

The best example of this is when you are forced to play as a different character. During the course of the game you will twice have to fight to the death with a bounty hunter against another bounty hunter. There is no reason for either of these characters to be in the game, let alone the fact that you have to play as them is irritating. They are not interesting, and one wonders if something was meant to happen with them that never got implemented, or if there was never supposed to be a point to it. It is really a shame that there isn't a ‘take neither side' option with them, which is what most people, regardless of whether they try to be a Jedi or Sith or neither, would probably wish they could do.

Game play is also a bit lacking. Early bosses may confuse you, but after a certain point you will never truly be challenged. The final boss is one of the least intimidating final bosses in the history of video games, and the final levels are mostly a lot of walking with a few short fights thrown in. I will try not to spoil anything, but it is safe to say that you will have been wishing you could have killed the final boss for the length of the entire game, and the fact that the game ends with their death just makes you feel cheated, because the game ends by letting you do something most people will have thought there should be an option for in the very beginning.

You do have many options to chose with regards to how your character plays, and you can make almost any type of Jedi/Sith under the sun, from evil, dual light saber wielding Sith Marauders to neutral dead-eyes with blasters, to pure light side Jedis who wear robes and only use the force. One would think there SHOULD be a lot of replay value. But because of the lame plot and horrid dialogue you won't ever want to replay it.

Side quests are plentiful, and of many different varieties depending on how you play the game. There is also a card game that you can learn how to play, and gamble at, that is quite fun. The problem is the computer isn't very good at it. The problem with side quests is that most of the time you will complete the quest before you are given it. So when you talk to somebody for the first time they will say ‘thank you for so and so' and your journal will be updated with a completed quest. As someone who favors freedom of movement in video games, I think the side quests should have been much more in depth and had more obvious effects on the game world.

What combines the bad game play and bad plot to be almost insufferably awful is the dialogue. Conversation loops do not function well, unless you choose things in the perfect order you'll have to listen to characters say the same thing three or four times before you can exit a conversation. That may not sound so bad, but in KOTOR II there is fifteen minutes of dialogue for every half hour of actually gaming. It is fun at first to chose the light or the dark side, but you get to master the side you are on about ten hours into the game. Once you've heard the first two characters you meet explain their view of the world you've pretty much heard every character you'll ever meet. Maybe it's the fact that there are about a half dozen face models in the entire game, but I do think they literally repeat dialogue over and over as well. There are so many lame attempts at being clever you'll feel like you are at a bad stand up night. By about halfway through the game you won't have the patience to listen to the dialogue, nor will you have to, it is very simple to guess what people say.

The end sequence is ridiculously lame, and yet drags on forever. The dialogue is literally laughably bad at several points once you initiate the endgame sequence (at which point, by the way, you can't go back and finish anything else). Because you'll have the best items you are going to get about halfway through the game, and as stated before the final villain is a joke, the entire endgame feels unnecessary, trivial and lame.

If you play KOTOR II for ten minutes at your buddy's house you will be nonplussed, you won't see what the big deal is, but you'll be willing to give it a shot. If you play it for ten to twenty hours you will be in love, and already thinking about what you will do the next time you play through it. If you play it through to the end you will feel cheated, insulted and never want to play it again. There was a great game in here somewhere. If KOTOR III is made I will definitely rent it. But do yourself a favor and leave KOTOR II on the shelf.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 02/03/05